Ho hum, well, seeing as no one else has seen fit to mention it, perhaps I ought to point out that there is a new FSF-approved Linux distribution available.
It's called gNewSense and you can read all about it from that link.
It's aimed at those who want the eye-stingingly pure, whiter-than-white FLOSS experience. So don't expect any multimedia, plugin and 3D desktop bells and whistles.
I wonder how long before someone comes up with a howto on getting all the extra bits to work with it (i.e. replacing what they have laboriously removed): people a contrary beings.

I am thinking of developing my own distro called gNuisance Linux, that has features designed to p1ss off as many people as possible, whether they be dedicated FLOSSers, or proprietary eye-candy junkies. It might just catch on with the masochistic tendency in both camps.

Rhakios wrote:I am thinking of developing my own distro called gNuisance Linux, that has features designed to p1ss off as many people as possible, whether they be dedicated FLOSSers, or proprietary eye-candy junkies. It might just catch on with the masochistic tendency in both camps.

Nice idea, but are you prepared for the inevitable whingeing when 1sf (troll) tries to install it ?

Fair enough to the FSF -- they do great work -- but they really have a bad way with names, don't they? gNewSense? HURD? Andrew, our production chap, just loves it when we explain what HURD means in the magazine. He's constantly astounded by the invention in that double-recursive acronym.

The name GNewSense makes me think of Richard Stallman sitting at a desk with a crab in front of him, saying: "I'm talking Gnonce Sense. We at the FSF have more genetic material in common with crabs than with human beings. There's no actual proof for this, but it IS scientific fact."

It will feature the K(rappy)D(esktop)E(nvironment) though. Which will differ from your usual KDE in that all the really useful configuration options will be present, but greyed out.

My other thought is to develop Gnubile Linux, for young ladies who have reached that age and are of a certain disposition. Sadly as I don't know any, I've no idea what features to offer Still, the developers of D(irty)O(ld)M(an) Linux have offered me all the help I might need if I do decide to go ahead.

Really, it's terrible the way this thread has got off the politically very important topic of GNewSense and onto some nonsense I tacked onto the end of my post in a fit of sarcasm. Still, I have only myself to blame

Back on topic... Groklaw carried the announcement a few days ago. PJ, as expected, is all in favour, but many posters were asking why go to all this trouble when Debian is about as politically correct as you can get The consensus seems to be that they want the ease of installation, setup & use of *buntu with the untaintedness of Debian, and gNewSense is supposed to give just that.

It will be interesting to see just how well it works out.

Is the FSF finally admitting that the Hurd won't be ready until Heck freezes over ?

Well, we all know that Hell is at least partly frozen, so the rest might follow, but now Heck has to freeze as well?! I am not aware of any knowledgeable accounts of Heck, perhaps someone from the forums could elucidate its thermal condition?

Yes Nigel, I was aware of the purpose of gNewSense, though I appreciate you making it clear for everyone here. However, this is no doubt what gave rise to my sarcastic inclination. Those who need an easy-to-use installer are unlikely to be happy with a distro stripped of all the whizzy bits, while those who will be interested in it are quite capable of disabling those Debian repositories which provide the naughty-but-nice things of which they disapprove.
I must try downloading it some time, just to see if I can get all the proprietary stuff working on it, but not this weekend.

Rhakios wrote:Ho hum, well, seeing as no one else has seen fit to mention it, perhaps I ought to point out that there is a new FSF-approved Linux distribution available.

Rest assured, Rhakios, now you have mentioned it, various other people (one step behind you as usual) will leap in to tell us all about it.

It makes me wonder though, do we really need yet another distro? How can we encourage disaffected Windows users to switch to Linux when they suddenly realise that you don't just switch to "Linux". They first have to contend with a confusing array of distros spread before them.

It may be just me but I have a sneaky feeling that Ubuntu is rapidly becoming synonymous with Linux and this is certainly what I would recommend to newcomers.

So here is this new, completely FSF distro. No access to 3D acceleration, media codecs, free but propritory programs... does the Mozilla licence qualify for this?

We had a spell a little while ago where the PCLinuxOS forums were getting flamed by people accusing the distro of not being "pure" Free Software.

Making Linux accessible to newcomers isn't about theoretical debates about different licences, it's about making it usable. PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu, Mepis and others are trying to go down that road. From what I see, "Nuisance" linux seems to be just the opposite, a distracting festival of intellectual self-abuse!

One could argue that starting with a "tainted" distro and hacking out the impure parts means your distro is still less than pure. What's wrong with using an FSF-friendly distro, like Debian, as the starting point?

It strikes me as a pointless exercise.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (Albert Einstein)

More news on my own gNuisance Linux distribution. The K(rappy) D(esktop) E(nvironment) will have all the icons labelled along the lines of "Your Computer", "Your Documents", "Your Pictures" and the same for music, browser, wastebin and so on.
Originally, I was going to call them "The Documents" etc., until I thought, why waste people's time with three useless, futile and time wasting extra letters prepended to the front of everything, when I could do the same with four!